From the Left

The left is alarmed by the idea of the President declaring a National Emergency solely to circumvent Congress.

From the Right

The right argues that declaring a national emergency is probably legal, but nevertheless opposes doing so due to worries about executive overreach.

“Of the 58 times presidents have declared emergencies since Congress reformed emergency-powers laws in 1976, none involved funding a policy goal after failing to win congressional approval… If President Trump invokes emergency powers to build a wall along the southern border, it could be a mutually face-saving way to reopen the government, but also an extraordinary violation of constitutional norms.”New York Times

“Does the president have, as he says, ‘the absolute right’ to do this? Well, very little about presidential power is supposed to be absolute. But the [National Emergencies Act] can now be added to the list of statutes passed by Congress during its post-Watergate resurgence that were meant to rein in the presidency but have, in fact, empowered it.”Washington Post

“The lawmakers of an earlier age… made an egregious oversight: They assumed that future presidents would use these extraordinary powers in good faith, to address genuine national emergencies. The Trump administration is a monument to their lack of foresight. In an unhappy syzygy, the areas where Congress has ceded the most power and the broadest discretion—immigration and national security—also happen to be Trump’s favorite playgrounds for both policy and politics.”New Republic

“While the NEA provides broad authority to declare a national emergency, simply saying he thinks something is a national emergency does not provide Trump with authority to build a wall. In order to use emergency military construction authority, there must in fact exist a national emergency ‘that requires use of the armed forces.’ In other words, beyond declaring simply that a national emergency exists, the executive branch must be able to show that the emergency at issue necessitates use of the armed forces…

“There is no reasonable argument that families and children seeking asylum constitute an emergency that demands a military response… Trump’s proposal is the type of unilateral action one would expect to find in an authoritarian regime. The national emergency is not at our Southern border, it sits in the White House.”Just Security

Minority view: “Everyone calm down about that declaration of National Emergency… the ominously vast grant of emergency authority boils down to Trump’s ability to shuffle around resources the Pentagon already has… [This is] a president exercising power delegated to him by a co-equal branch of government consistent with the structure of separation of powers—and likewise subject to review in litigation by another co-equal branch of government.”Lawfare Blog

“Rather than continuing with a debate about whether or not to build a wall, Democrats should shift the debate to different ground: they should propose spending more money to ensure a smarter, more efficient and more humane border policy. Democrats have already supported this agenda in the existing budget, but by offering to spend more for these measures they can highlight the false choice that the administration is giving voters… Good border security does not mean building a big wall.”CNN

From the Right

The right argues that declaring a national emergency is probably legal, but nevertheless opposes doing so due to worries about executive overreach.

“The idea that the current situation at the border is an emergency is not far-fetched. An estimated $64 billion in drugs are smuggled into the United States every year… In 1995, President Clinton signed an executive order declaring a ‘national emergency’ finding that [narcotics traffickers in Colombia] ‘constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.’ The order stood long enough for President George W. Bush to extend it in 2004.”The Federalist

“For all that, a move to build the wall unilaterally wouldn’t be nearly as brazen as the Obama-imposed amnesty for so-called Dreamers, or DACA. The Obama administration simply wrote legislation on its own authority after getting stiffed by Congress. Trump would at least be relying on congressional statute, and would ultimately have a better chance in the courts than Obama did.”Politico

Some argue that “a court will undoubtedly stop Trump. And that’s presumably what he’s looking for… While a court works to strike down that emergency declaration, Trump can fulminate against the judiciary, the Democrats, and weak-kneed Republicans. He gets a win from his base; the government reopens; the Democrats can claim that they never caved. That’s the most cynical answer to Trump’s government shutdown predicament…

“Trump should [instead] stick to his guns… Earmarks alone cost the federal taxpayers $14.7 billion in 2018. Each Congressperson should be forced to explain why building a bridge named after them in Podunk ought to outweigh the national security interests of the United States.”Daily Wire

Minority view: “The president’s use of his existing statutory authority to declare a national emergency is the only way out of the current stalemate… The president has gotten nowhere with the obstructionist Democrats who have blocked his relatively modest budget appropriations request… Neither the construction of effective physical border barriers nor the full reopening of the federal government should wait any longer.”Frontpage Magazine